ASTAC

ASTAC Members

  • Bernhard Mueller, Monash (Chair)
  • Aaron Ludlow, UWA
  • Ilya Mandel, Monash
  • Aditi Vijayan, ANU

Ex-officios

  • Pawsey Representative and User Consultant – Chris Harris
  • Swinburne Representative and User Consultant – Jarrod Hurley
  • NCI Representative and User Consultant – vacant

Additional Support

  • Technical Secretary (ADACS) – Eman Ali
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Call for Proposals: ASTAC 2025-A

ASTAC has issued a call for proposals for the use of the following resources from 1st January 2025 to 30th June 2025 (i.e. Quarters 1-2, 2025). The resources available under this call are as follows:

1. NCI Astronomy Program: up to 8,000 kSUs
This program is targeted at scalable astrophysics codes that can take advantage of multiple cores for parallel computation on a well-balanced, high-performance computing system. Allocations will run on the Gadi system at the NCI National Facility.

2. OzSTAR: up to 2,000 kSUs (1,200 kSUs prioritised for GPUbased projects)
OzSTAR is the Swinburne HPC facility. It includes the original OzSTAR supercomputer (installed 2018) which comprises 115 nodes each with 36 Intel SkyLake X6140 CPU cores and 2 NVIDIA P100 12 GB graphics programming units (GPUs). It also includes the Ngarrgu Tindebeek (NT) supercomputer installed in 2023 which comprises 182 nodes each with 64 AMD Milan EPYC7543 CPU cores. 22 nodes contain 4 NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPUs and 10 nodes have 1024 TB RAM (compared to 256 GB otherwise).

The current call for proposals closes at 8pm (AEDT) Friday 22nd November 2024.

Please click here for more information on the call and how to apply. 

AAL’s Astronomy Supercomputer Time Allocation Committee (ASTAC) allocates available time on the following supercomputer resources for dedicated national astronomy access:

  • OzSTAR, Swinburne University Supercomputer
  • NCI Gadi, NCI National Facility

AAL will also consider ASTAC allocating time on other supercomputer resources that have dedicated national astronomy access, where appropriate.

There are usually two calls for proposals per year, announced in May and November, and closing in June and December. Please refer to ASTAC’s allocation principles.

Terms of reference

Members of ASTAC are appointed by the AAL Board via an application process (organised by AAL) and are installed for a two-year fixed term, with the possibility of renewal. In addition:

  • AAL is responsible for appointing Chair and Deputy Chair positions on the committee. The Chair position is typically a one year term, reporting to the AAL board.
  • AAL aims for institutional, geographical, career stage and gender diversity across its advisory committees.

ASTAC is formed by Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and the ASTAC process is managed by Astronomy Data and Computing Services (ADACS).